The Will Of Star, Part 3

           Miles is stalking me.
           Not exactly stalking.
           But he has a sudden tendency to show up at the most inopportune moments, when I least expect him.
           Monday he followed me home. In his Taurus.
           I was riding the bus.
           Tuesday he left notes in my locker. Anonymous ones.
           Not that I had any doubt of the sender’s identity.
           Wednesday he wangled a seat next to me in the cafeteria. Star was mysteriously absent again.
           And a good thing for him too.
           Thursday is not over yet, but I have premonition that he is going to show up on my doorstep the moment precisely after I arrive home.
           Lucky me.
           I have never been so resolute in any of my crusades prior to this. I have no idea at what point I suddenly became so unyielding.
           What’s peculiar is that in any other instance, this would be the circumstance in which I would capitulate most utterly.
           The irony.
           Just as prognosticated, Miles is my surrogate doormat for this evening. I march up the front steps, ignoring his presence entirely.
           And wonder if Star’s sudden disregard for academia at large is due to a similar obstacle.
           “Lourdes.” He’s imploring. He’s undisguised, he’s open to attack.
           Why this vulnerability?
           Why for me?
           I haven’t always been so cynical, but now I can’t rid myself of the conviction that it’s some undercover scheme, to get Star back, to foil his other, more eager suitoresses, anything, however ludicrous, as long as he’s not as serious about this as I’m coming to be persuaded that he is.
           “Go away, Miles.” I flip open the mailbox. The faux gold seal is wearing thin. The homely steel is visible underneath, insecure and shivering with fear of disapproval.
           I realize peripherally that Miles is attempting a smile.
           I slam the mailbox shut, load my arms with another worthless batch of unsolicited junk.
           Miles, at this point, is unsolicited junk.
           But, though I am as firm as I have ever been in this matter, there is still a very vocal minority, screeching to be heard.
           I don’t go in. Not yet.
           “Lourdes, why are you doing this?” He’s bewildered. No one’s ever not liked him before.
           Except for Star.
           I expect that was justifiable.
           For some reason, I rather relish my position. Handing him the detention slip he hasn’t earned.
           Has Skadi caused this sadism in me?
           “Why shouldn’t I be doing this?”
           I slam the door in his face.
           I’m as haughty as the queens of forties’ movie sets, and my glamour is just as superficial.
           I’m shallow, I’m flimsy, mere surface tension.
           Pretty wrapping paper.
           Unsettled, unable to calm my inner turmoil despite my outward placidity, I slump into a chair. Snatch at the first thing my fingers can reach, scrambling for an excuse. For anything.
           Boredom rarely offers you a rationale you can believe in. If your whole mind is focused on the lack of logic, persuasion is nigh impossible.
           My hand, as it turns out, has found a forgotten beauty magazine.
           Beauty. Ha.
           Beauty is a survival tactic. A curse. A saving grace.
           I flip through the pages, wondering idly if I am beautiful, and if indeed I care. If indeed it matters.
           If beautiful has served Star to any great reward.
           The girls that smile up at me from the glossy prints are gorgeous, so exceptionally, unforgettably lovely as to be entirely faceless.
           Another beautiful girl.
           Ugliness is so much more personal.
           And what does all this philosophizing add up to?
           What is it worth?
           I may as well be stuffing cotton balls into my aural passages, for all the assistance it’s giving my overworked brain.
           What is beauty, exactly?
           Beauty is subjective.
           Beauty is indefinable.
           And it is so precious.
           Star has it.
           Why?
           Why does everyone recognize it in her?
           And why do I feel as though it’s a weapon, as powerful and volatile as an atomic bomb?
           Why do I suddenly feel as though she’s a threat, when she is my best friend?
           Is she my best friend?
           Life is, sadly, not a mathematical equation. But nothing seems to add up. Nothing.
           My tears splash unceremoniously onto the faces of the beautiful girls.

           “I love him.”
           It is Star’s voice, a wondering, effortless whisper, soft as velour in the kind light of morning.
           She has never told me about Elif. Somehow she is aware that I am aware.
           I’ve never taken the time to question her methods, reason them out. I doubt I will this time either.
           And she repeats herself, jubilantly, her voice rising shakily, like the craggy slope of a sun-bathed mountain. “I love him, Lourdes. Oh, God, I love him.”
           It should be so pure, so sweet, so enviably sincere.
           But it’s not.
           It’s sincere, but it’s loathsome, it’s nauseating; how can you do this to me? I want to scream.
           Maybe I’m being selfish, but I hate these words, I hate them so violently, so profoundly, I feel as though I’m imploding, just like a supernova, unable to control my own end as I destroy myself from within.
           And how can she do this to herself?
           Star is sixteen.
           How can she know?
           How can she know what love is?
           I’m suddenly sickened with my own regrettable emotions for Miles, the night of the dance. How could I have been so senseless?
           Skadi, have pity on your daughter.
           Both your daughters, actually.

           “You should be pleased to see this.” Star thrusts a piece of paper at me.
           This is a day after our brief phone conversation concerning the Love Of Her Life.
           She is so collected. So cool.
           How can she keep switching personalities like this?
           Doesn’t she find it exhausting?
           I find it exhausting just being me. And as far as personalities go, I probably expend less energy than most.
           I remain staring at Star for several seconds after the paper is in my hand. She raises a yellow eyebrow, a waning moon, and I look away. Hastily.
           The paper contains a schedule: Monday, check mark, Tuesday, check mark, Wednesday…
           I glance askance at Star, who waits patiently, if eagerly, for my response. She’s quietly bouncy, subtly ecstatic. It must take amazing stolidity to suppress all her apparent exhilaration.
           “What is it?”
           “It’s a running schedule,” she explains. “You wouldn’t want to get out of shape, now would you?”
           She smiles and walks away.
           I want to call after her, want to ask what the point of all this is.
           But that would be foolish. Not to mention out of character.
           And we wouldn’t want that, would we?
 
           The meeting is at night.
           It is black as oblivion when Star and I arrive in the foothills, now our customary place.
           There’s something eerie about being out so late, but also something thrilling: we’re breaking somebody’s rule, somewhere.
           There is a great fire burning, twisted orange saplings growing great in the nurture of the night. The girls around it are lit up in the emanating malice.
           Star takes her place on a convenient stump, her shadow seeming to tower over us, a hyperbolic monster of child’s nightmare.
           She starts out with a prayer, which is vehemently, raucously chorused.
           Then she cries, “Have you all the sacrifice?”
           A proud, a rumbling, “Yes!”
           My voice is among these shouts, but I can’t understand how.
           Or why.
           A girl, with streaming black hair, like ribbons, plethoric ribbons, emerges from the crowd.
           In one triumphant hand she holds a fluffy gray cat.
           It is yowling piteously; it is a wonder I hadn’t heard it before.
           It is as if it knows its own fate.
           Another girl emerges. She produces a knife.
           I know what is coming.
           Still, I’m shocked to see the blood, spilling brutally red down the limp gray fur, the strong bronze fingers.
           The mob is shouting in frenzied unison, in horrifying, terrible joy; I recoil from those standing around me.
           I can’t do this, I can’t do this.
           Oh God. Oh God, oh God.
           I back out of the crowd, bile rising my throat.
           I crouch, sobbing.
           I vomit, predictably.
           And pray.
           I feel as though something holy has been desecrated. I should feel sanctified.
           This is the will of Skadi.
           What price do we pay to carry it out?
           I stumble farther away from the roaring mass, my tears unbearably hot, scorching me like rivers of lava. I fall mercifully into a bed of cold grass.
           What is salvation worth?
           I ask myself.
           Anything.
           I reply.
           But that is not the pertinent question; it is, in fact, completely irrelevant.
         Is this salvation?

           To distract myself from my persistent nausea, I pick up Star’s running schedule, the day after the sacrifice.
           Today is a running day. Mercifully.
           I change into a pair of shorts, a baggy T-shirt. It’s freezing outside, but I don’t care.
           It’s not as if I’m not already cold, both without and within.
           I lace up my Reeboks. They’re dingy, worn with age, and utterly conformed to my feet by now. The kind of shoes you can never let go of.
           I step outside ambitiously. Will I run a mile? Two? Ten?
           I begin to jog when I reach the end of my block.
           For a few minutes I’m blissful.
           For the next I’m slightly breathless.
           And after that, I’m dragging.
           I am deathly afraid that Star will see me. That anyone, in fact, will see me.
           It would be as if I were giving in, confessing. There’s something demeaning about it. If someone is to see me running, it is somehow proven that perfection isn’t natural.
           And no one likes to think that.
           No one wants anyone else to think that about himself.
           It would be so easy, so convenient, for example, to think that Star was born lithe and fresh-faced.
           The first time I discovered her extensive Revlon collection and her membership to the health club, I was rather disappointed.
           I stop running.
           I don’t have the fortitude for long distances, as it turns out.
           Not that that’s exactly a change of pace.
           Lack of fortitude.

           There’s been a death.
           A boy.
           Seventeen.
           He was murdered.
           I think he was in my history class.

           Christmas rolls by, a vapid, vacuous blip in my calendar. This year I am blessed with CDs, too many candy canes, my favorite movie on DVD. More things that need double-a batteries.
           And lines, slender and sad, on my father’s forehead.
           I feel as though I should blame someone for time.
           Was it his boss?
           Was it She?
           Was it a long year?
           Was it friends he knew, drifting away?
           Or does the accusing finger snap back like a boomerang?
           Was it me?
 
           There’s a coldness in me that I carry around like a permanent block of ice in my heart. The snow that litters the mourning earth is July to my inner January.
           Star keeps asking me, with wide-open, ingenuous eyes, if something is wrong.
           The prospect of her worrying over me is oddly attractive.
           But I never answer.
           Not truthfully, anyway.
           The sacrifices were supposed to take place once a month. However, they’ve become so popular that they happen almost every week.
           The next time I tried to not go.
           Star made me go.
           I’d like to say I went kicking and screaming.
           I can’t. But I was on the verge.
           I suppose that’s progress. The thought of defiance entered my mind.
           Optimism is a cruel torture sometimes.
           Now I just tolerate the blood. I look away. I sink into the zealous mob like it is mud, like it is quicksand.
           Surprisingly enough, our doings haven’t made the papers.
           Yet.
           The boy who died did, though.
           He was in my history class, after all. Two seats up, three to the right.
           I live in a shell of goose bumps.
           From my unusually meticulous memory bank I receive a barrage of unwanted details.
           He was the one with all the answers.
           Who gave the Gettysburg Address?
           Abraham Lincoln, the sixteenth president.
           What river did Julius Caesar cross?
           The Rubicon.
           Have I crossed my Rubicon?
           Did he cross his?
           Did he get a chance?
           They haven’t found his killer yet.
           But they have their suspicions.
           Who are they eyeing, exactly?
           Us.

           Star hasn’t said a word about the dead boy.
           She’s been asked.
           We’ve all been asking.
           It isn’t stoicism, precisely. It’s a heap and a half of pretending, hoping it, like most bad things tend not to, will go away.
           The police were parked at Kira’s the other day. Lucky hid underneath the squad car, his black fur flashing blue and red.
           I think I must have been drinking too much water lately.
           Because my tear ducts just can’t stop getting rid of it.
 
           Star stands atop the crowd like the mast of a ship. She carries us on, she gives us balance, power.
           It is moments like this, you understand the Tower of Babel. You want to reach out, and touch the sphere of beauty that Star possesses, and equally possesses her.
           It’s a kind of greed, but it’s also a kind of clean yearning, surgically devouring all the organs we can’t spare.
           She is a glass figurine that you inexplicably want to drop; is it real? Will it shatter?
           What does pain feel like?
           I’ve always felt Pandora was somewhat misunderstood.
           If I am a moth, fluttering uneasily on corn silk wings, and Star is the light, so deliciously bright, that I can’t stand not to reach, will the burn of death be worth it?
           Another boy died yesterday.
           He was seventeen.
           He was murdered.

           There is a message on my answering machine, when I return home from one of my daily runs.
           It is from Miles.
           Which is interesting in itself. I haven’t spoken to him for three weeks. Going on four.
           “Hey, Lourdes. You want to uh…” Pause. “There’s a movie…er…” Pause. “Well, listen, do you want to go to a movie with me on Friday?” Pause. “Uh, call me back please.” He recites his number mechanically and signs off.
           The boy is falling apart.
           Can my humble charms have effected this emotional disintegration?
           I call back, smooth as glass. “I’m sorry Miles,” I tell his machine.
           “I just can’t.”

           Later that same day, I receive a call from Star.
           She is not, however, calling to discuss what I hoped that she was calling to discuss.
           Namely, the two dead boys and our supposed connection.
           No, she maintains her feigned ignorance, at least for one more day.
           But she still has no pleasant news.
           “Elif wants me to run away with him.” Her voice is quavering whisper. I can see her lips tremble on the other end of the line.
           The silence that follows is like a bucket of water, heavy, being carried by someone unfit for the job: someone slender, weak. It’s suspenseful; will he drop the bucket, the water slipping desperately away from him?
           Or will he make it to his destination?
           Will the obstacles be overcome? 
           I am tense, impatient. What can I say? What will I say?
           I want to simply tell her the obvious: she is sixteen, Elif is older, it’s an all-around bad idea.
           She knows this already.
           Why is she telling me this as if she wants sage advice?
           And suddenly there’s anger in the pit of my stomach, like fire, but fiercer than that: ice. I clench my teeth, I grind my fists, I feel boiling mercury behind my eyes.
           I have given up Miles for her.
           I have given up everything for her.
           “Don’t be stupid, Star.”

           For once in my life, I take action.
           I ask around. Who were these two boys?
           I obtain phone numbers, addresses. I take pains to find out who their friends were, where their parents work, what they were into.
           On my daily runs I go by their houses. I pretend I am writing for the school newspaper, and I ask questions of their parents.
           I’m peculiarly empowered. Subterfuge is not natural to me, not in the slightest.
           But I am succeeding.
           The first boy’s name was Aaron. He worked at a jewelry store that his uncle owns. He had red hair. Was fascinated with watches.
           The second boy was named Devin. He was currently unemployed, but was applying for a job at a department store. His girlfriend, Janna, had recently moved to Indiana. He had a 4.0.
           Two stars have been winked out.
           Why?
           The entire town is murmuring, casting dark glances. Eyeing each beautiful girl as she strides confidently down the sidewalk.
           Is she a Skadi girl?
           Is she part of this monstrous deed?
           Alone in my room, I can almost hear their whispering, distant and askance. They hang around my head like an impending storm cloud, a not-quite tempest.
           The unrelenting imminence is excruciating. It’s driven me to measures I rarely ever consider: being brave without the succor of Star.
           There were two articles in the newspaper about us this week. Neither outright accused us; both implied it subtly, maliciously, horribly.
           Star is not the Joan of Arc I used to be convinced she was.
           But she would not kill people.
           I know she wouldn’t.
           I just know it.

           I go for a run.
           I can go for almost thirty minutes now.
           I blame my sudden athleticism on my loyal Reeboks and divine intervention. My calves wouldn’t have the capacity for my quotidian marathons otherwise.
           I don’t have a route, but instead rely on my intuitive feet. They show me the path that will let me avoid humanity at large.
           Important now more than ever since I am one of the notorious Skadi girls.
           Today I head east, to the not-so-ritzy avenues: squalid sidewalks, water-stained ceilings, peeling paint. It’s faintly familiar, but it’s so stereotypical. My memory could merely be of a movie set.
           But as I meander through increasingly serpentine blocks, low-rent housing, I realize that I do recognize this realm.
            In fact, if I’m not mistaken, that’s Elif’s house.
           In fact, I think the black figure over yonder is Elif.
           I stop running abruptly. My heart rate is unseasonably choked.
           Elif walks casually down the gray streets, Lucky on his heels. I’m relieved to see Star isn’t with him.
           I’m also terrified out of my wits.
           And consequently rooted to the spot.
           Elif catches sight of me and heads over.
           I have an irrational hope that he doesn’t remember me. But his grin proves otherwise.
           “Lourdes.” A sly smile that I immediately resent. “It’s been a long time.”
           I nod dumbly.
           “How’s Star?”
           There’s a muffled rage in my head, as if someone’s pounding on a closed door. I mutter, almost inaudibly, “Wouldn’t you know better than I would?”
           He raises his eyebrows. “What was that?”
           “Nothing,” I snap. There’s something unsettling about him, something that puts me automatically on defense.
           How can Star stand being around him all the time? His aura is stifling.
           He crouches down and scratches Lucky around his silky black ears. “This cat of hers follows me everywhere, you know.” He chuckles. “I can’t get rid of either of them.”
           I feel my face tighten.
           “Do you want to get rid of them?”
           I gasp mutely; my voice is so unforgiving.
           Elif looks vaguely surprised. “Do you doubt me?”
           I’m stony-faced, silent.
           Elif sits back on his heels, smiling broadly. I recognize irrelevantly that he could be attractive if I didn’t despise him with the deepest sincerity one is capable of feeling.
           “You hate me. Why?”
           He doesn’t look disturbed by this revelation at all; if anything, he’s amused.
           His eyes are dark like nocturnal windows, black glass.
           I feel swallowed, consumed.
           “You’re trying to kill Star,” I choke.
           I mean this figuratively.
           Or at least I think I mean this figuratively.
           This accusation has no effect on him whatsoever. “Why would I want to do that?” He adds, with a smile that hints at his immense amusement, “I love her, after all.”
           I utilize the leg muscles Skadi has helped me build.
           Sprinting isn’t such bad exercise, after all.

           We have a Skadi meeting, the first week of February. It’s not a ritual day; instead it’s a sort of public reconciliation for our collective sins.
           Star refuses to call it confession.
           But that’s what it is, basically.
           One by one we go up to her perch on a regal stump, state our failings as phlegmatically as we can manage.
           I try to listen, learn from others’ mistakes, but my mind wanders.
           Maybe I will confess that.
           Usually I’m more interested.
           But after my encounter with Elif, I can’t be anything more than distracted, even apathetic.
           He nags at my thoughts as if he’s yanking a tug-o-war rope.
           I haven’t yet figured out how to yank back.
           Trying to focus my wavering attention, I glance determinedly at Star and the line of confessors.
           “O Great Skadi, I have doubted your word.”
           “Skadi forgives you. Be at peace.”
           “O Great Skadi, I didn’t follow my diet plan.”
           “Skadi forgives you. Be at peace.”
           “O Great Skadi, I felt a desire for a boy.”
           “Skadi forgives you. Be at peace.”
           “O Great Skadi, I have doubted whether we had anything to do with the murders.”
           My head snaps up.
           Star’s silence is as loud as thunder. Her eyes are just as stormy.
           I can feel the lightning from here.
           Her benevolent smile shrinks; her face contorts. Her hand, as elegant as diamond jewelry, shoots up like a viper.
           The sound of her slap echoes violently through the quiet foothills, deathly still.
           The girl, clutching her injured cheek, gasps in shock and pain.
           The wind floats by us impassively. Otherwise there is a complete absence of sound.
           I see Oracene, standing amid the pool of those already forgiven, smirking as though Christmas has come early.
           Or late.
           Star recovers after a moment, but I can’t breathe for several hours afterward.
           I’m encased in ice.
           I think it’s fear.

           Another boy is dead.
           His parents want us to overpopulate the county jail.
           I can’t always feel my fingers when I wake up in the morning.
           My heart is like the moon.
           Freezing and full of holes.

           She and He call me in for a family conference.
           This can’t be a prelude to anything good.
           I sit down at the kitchen table. I notice She and He are clasping hands underneath it.
           “Lourdes,” begins She, with palpable nervousness. “We want to talk to you about this Skadi thing.”
           “We know you’re involved,” He continues. “But we…we can’t conscience this, if you know what I mean.”
           I stare them down, like I’m made of marble. The battle trenches have long ago been dug. It’s easier to just jump in and start shooting than to fill them again.
           “No.”
           “W-what?” He falters. “You don’t know what I mean?”
           I drop my eyes and let him decide.
           “Lourdes, this is getting out of hand,” She says urgently. “Three boys are dead and the whole town is talking…”
           “We didn’t do it.”
           She and He glance at one another.
           “It’s against your faith, Lourdes.”
           “What faith?”
           Silence.
           “Lourdes, even your name…you’re baptized in the…in the Catholic Church…”
           “Your point?”

           I leave the house after our so-called conference, though it’s dark and cold.
           I’ve got emotional hypothermia as it is. I doubt the temperature is going to influence me all that much.
           The night welcomes me in, an old friend opening a door. I feel almost safe, for once.
           I have to wonder how my life spiraled so out of control.
           Because it is out of control.
           My grip on it amounts to about that of a Barbie doll.
           Her fingers don’t bend.
           She is a pawn in pink polyester.
           There can be something refreshing about cold weather.
           Something pure in the crisp, clean wind.
           The trees are magnificent, black in the deep blue world around me. There’s a transcendent quality to them, as though their branches, reaching as spires of a Gothic cathedral, are superior to their earthbound roots, equal to the towering majesty of the sky.
           Above.
           Above.
           Rain runs down my face though the skies are clear. The stars sparkle in the universe’s great eye.
           I feel watched. But…
           Alone.
           Alone.
           How do the stars survive?
           They are such lonely masts of life, gas stations along an endless, empty, intergalactic freeway.
           I think of the phone message from Miles, of my cold, unexplained and unexplainable refusal.
           I think of the last Skadi meeting, the red bruise on the girl’s cheek after she was hit.
           I think of my parents and their predictable, innocent concern.
           And I am helpless.
           Is my behavior a product of new confidence or desperate defense?
           I want to scream into the sympathetic atmosphere, to have the sound swallowed into the vast chasms of space and time. To click back into my place in the solar system.
           I’m out of orbit.
           This is much worse than anything my inner psychiatrist can analyze.
           It all comes down to one simple, enigmatic, impossible question, really.
           What in God’s name am I going to do?
 
           I go to Mass with my parents for some reason.
           It seems pointless, painfully hypocritical.
           She smiles for the first time in at least two weeks.
           (Although I haven’t smiled with any sincerity since November.
           Is there a purpose to all this?
           Does it matter?)
           We sit in the pews, waiting until Mass starts. I’m indifferent to the whispers of my fellow Sunday-saints. They know who I am, through the grapevine and other such devious methods.
           I am a Skadi girl.
           I have quite possibly catalyzed three murders.
           I do not belong in a conventional church.
           I desecrate this place with my very presence.
           And I don’t care.
           Apathy is a rather comfortable emotion, like a huge pillow you can sink into and thus hide from the world for a precious while.
           I hold tight to my apathy, for here it is the only thing that keeps me sane.
           The priest steps to the altar, gives his speech.
           I wonder listlessly how people can listen and believe what he says.
           Compared to Star, he’s entirely unappealing.
           Socks for Christmas.
           I suppress the urge to crack my knuckles loudly in the middle of the First Letter of Saint Paul to the Corinthians. Somehow I doubt that will improve anyone’s opinion of me. Or of Skadi.
           It strikes me that I have been portrayed, am depicted as a rebel.
           The idea is laughable. Hysterical, actually.
           I haven’t rebelled at all. In fact, I’ve subscribed to Star’s way of thinking so strongly that I now am totally incapable of rebellion.
           I plead not guilty by reason of pure emotional exhaustion.
           The priest gives a forgettable homily. He’s so bland, so dry.
           So uninspiring, compared to Star.
           He stands up after his sermon, prepares to continue the Mass. As he usually does.
           I catch myself staring at the crucifix. The big wooden one, behind the altar. Its form hangs precariously, on chains disguised with green ribbons, from the glossy sheet rock ceiling.
           Strange.
           I can’t tear my gaze away from Jesus’ broken body, as if that is of sole and singular importance.
           There’s something beautiful in this that is so apparently ugly, so pitiable, a manner of beauty that can never be found in Star’s many several beautiful layers.
           And just as I’m thinking this, I see one link of the chain snap, hurtle towards the choir loft.
           Another.
           Another.
           The church goes so quiet that some of the more spiritually inclined can probably detect the subtle voice of God, whispering His warnings.
           Maybe the priest is one of these, for suddenly he runs from the altar and down the aisle.
           There is a silence with such power as to rival the Almighty himself.
           The crucifix is lopsided, clutching desperately to its place by a single chain now.
           The wood splinters, deafening in the utter stillness.
           And the crucifix crashes to the earth, the face of Jesus filled with such obvious and profound melancholy that each individual heart breaks as He on his doomed ship smashes.
           No one can quite comprehend this.
           We can believe in angels, in saints, in unparalleled afterlives, in water into wine, but we cannot believe this.
           But now the quiescence is pierced, ripped like a priceless piece of brocade.
           One woman stands, her arm like the axe of the executioner, her finger pointed undeniably in my direction.
           “You!” she shrieks, her voice acute and unbearably clean, a sterile knife slicing you precisely across your pharynx. “It is you who has brought this tragedy upon us, you abomination! You blasphemous, heretical witch!”
           Her words seem to stand still, as if carved in stone, written before each of our eyes for each of us to read and understand, unavoidably.
           I am unable to speak.
           I am unable to think.
           I am, in fact, unable to do anything.
           She and He are staring at me, then at the bearer of my sentence, just as inept as I to deal with the situation.
           So I do what any sentient person would do.
           (Not that I am particularly sentient anymore.)
           I run.

           I see Miles in the halls.
           He still wears his characteristic mask, but he’s lost a little of his shine. There’s a worn look to him, like a shirt that’s been through the wash a few too many times.
           I don’t let him see me. I dread the threat of conversation.
           He’s sullen.
           The boys are in general.
           They don’t trust the girls anymore.
           They move about the halls in herds, seeking protection in numbers.
           This would have been hilarious six months ago. Now I only feel depressed.
           Star has not been able to come to school for four days, for fear of cataclysmic reactions.
           Star is not faultless, and she is not infallible, but she isn’t homicidal.
           I try to be unobtrusive, and avoid Miles’ dulled eyes, but a cough I can’t overpower rises in my throat.
           I should have known this would happen.
           I’ve become amazingly nocturnal, as of late.
           I take a nightly walk, let the darkness embrace me.
           As a result, I don’t sleep much and have contracted a lingering cold.
           This cough is hardly an accident. In fact, you could almost say I planned it, if subconsciously.
           But if so, my scheme has failed utterly.
           Miles looks up, meets my eyes momentarily. Barely acknowledges my existence.
           It takes me the whole of fourth period to decide that I can’t decide if I’m upset about this or not.
           Or if I should be.